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The Bishop Playground Improvement Committee

We are VERY pleased to announce that the Bishop School Playground is open and up and running!

We cannot thank the Bishop community enough for all of their support throughout the past year. Building this playground for our children is a huge accomplishment and directly benefits Bishop and the community at large.

It has been such a pleasure watching the children play on the beautiful, new playground equipment! There is almost always a crowd of children scaling the Spaceball or swinging on the Cloud 7s. Again, we thank the entire Bishop community for all of your help and support without which this project would not have been possible or successful!

As we look forward into the second phase of the playground project there is still work to be done. This spring we hope to:

Build a community bulletin board with plaques recognizing the donors who have contributed over $1,000 to the project
Re-coat and re-paint the asphalt with a generous donation offer made by Anthony Santagati
Place an “equipped weather station” and a sundial (both which tie wonderfully into the Bishop science curriculum) with money awarded to BPIC through an AEEF grant
Draw a map of the United States on the hard top
And, if possible, with continued fundraising, add more benches, picnic tables, trash barrels and landscaping to the area.

As always, in order to continue to develop and accomplish our tasks, we need your help and involvement. Please join us at our next BPIC meeting which will be held on Tuesday, March 25th at 7:30pm at the Arlington Enrichment Collaborative (AEC) which is located at 1100 Mass Ave, 2nd floor (above Arlington Tire). Future meetings are scheduled for April 29th, and May 27th (all starting at 7:30 at AEC).

BPIC Awarded Toyota Mini-grant

The Bishop Playground Improvement Committee (BPIC) is very excited to announce that Bishop Parent, Jim Ballin, and 5th grade teacher, Anne Hess-Mahan, have successfully been awarded a 2008 Toyota TAPESTRY Mini-Grant on behalf of BPIC! The money from this grant will be dedicated toward implementing science related components into our playground. We are so thankful to them for their hard work, commitment and enthusiasm to make this a reality for our kids to have an even more innovative, exciting and challenging playground.

What’s Next?

We will continue our fundraising efforts which will include a brick engraving fundraiser, the Amazon fundraiser, continuing to market and sell the Arlington EATS menu guide, and identifying a few, key individuals and businesses within the town from whom we will solicit additional funding. If we are successful raising money, we will try to purchase additional benches, picnic tables and trash barrels.

June Beautification

In early June we hope to come together again as a community and further “beautify” our playground (stay tuned for the date). On that day we hope to be building a community board, creating a brick patio with engraved bricks, planting and landscaping, re-coating and re-painting the asphalt (thanks to a generous offer from Bishop parent Anthony Santagati) and integrating some of the new science elements.

Buy a Brick

Honor a Bishop Bear, congratulate a fifth grader or thank a favorite teacher. Order by March 31st to get your personally inscribed 4 x 8 inch brick permanently displayed on the newly renovated playground. Click here for more information.

Other Ways to Support the Playground

The Arlington Eats Menu Guide directly at the Bishop School office or through Jenn Eisenheim at Jennrock@juno.com.

Start your shopping on Amazon.com using the link above and easily raise money for the continued improvement and beautification of the playground.

Come to a BPIC meeting

As always we are looking for volunteers to help with these projects and would appreciate any in-put. Please join us for our next BPIC meeting on Tuesday, March 25th at 7:30pm at the Arlington Enrichment Collaborative (AEC) which is located at 1100 Mass Ave, 2nd floor (above Arlington Tire). Please contact Justine Bloch at justinebloch@comcast.net with any questions or concerns.